Rise of the Runelords as a first adventure?

[mith5166]

I'm looking for a good adventure to run a few of my friends through. Only one of them has any experience with D&D, and he hasn't played in a long while. I was wondering if Rise of the Runelords was particularly difficult, or if it otherwise presents any problems to new players. In addition, would it be possible for me to ignore the information in the Player's Guide? I don't want to overwhelm them with information before they get a chance to actually play, I was just planning on telling them about the festival and having them come up with a reason their character was there. Is there anything in there they absolutely need to know before we get started?

[Jondera]

I'd say that Rise of the Runelords would be good for a group new to gaming, yeah.

As far as the player's guide goes... the major points would be deities (for those characters with religious inclinations) and possibly the equipment section (if anyone wants to take any of that stuff), but those are easy to work in without to much fuss.

[idilippy]

I agree with Jondera, this should be a fine first adventure, though if you have squeamish players you might look at changes to make to one of the middle adventures. Player's Guides can be avoided for the APs, but you might want to read through it and get the summary across to your players. The guides normally include information about the setting that characters will know and mechanical information like favored enemies to take and mechanical options that might be useful to ensure that characters don't make mechanical choices that might never come up. You can get this across to the players easily enough yourself though, and you can get the basic info across for the location and deities without the players reading through the entire guide.